Porter with flaked oats

A porter recipe so far:

10 lbs 2 row
1 lb 60L
3/4 lb Chocolate

and for some creaminess I was thinking 1 lb of flaked oats. Bad idea? Also, does the chocolate look right? Or should I up it to 1 lb.

I'd say that's plenty of chocolate (that's 2-3x what most porters use). C120L would probably work better than C60L. You might also consider 2 oz. of Black Barley. Typically, a porter would have some Munich, but 1/2 lb of oats would be an interesting variation.

Pete08 said:

A porter recipe so far:

10 lbs 2 row
1 lb 60L
3/4 lb Chocolate

and for some creaminess I was thinking 1 lb of flaked oats. Bad idea? Also, does the chocolate look right? Or should I up it to 1 lb.

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No it's not a bad idea, oats could be an interesting addition to a porter. I would suggest adding more dark malt and that you first think in percentages of the recipe rather than just weight. With the recipe as is the chocolate malt is only about 6%. About 10% dark malt is a good starting point for a dark ale so if you add the pound of oats to the recipe you would figure the dark malt at 1.25-1.5 lbs. For additional color and complexity consider using some black patent or Carafa malt to augment the chocolate. Maybe something like this:

10 lbs pale
1 lb oats
1 lb crystal
1.25 lbs chocolate
.25 lb black patent or Carafa

I have made a well-known robust porter recipe from the board here that used black patent, I'm not a huge fan. I'm going for more of BM's Black Pearl Porter, which uses 1lb of 60L and 1 lb of chocolate. This seems close to a BYO Black Butte Porter (mmm) recipe I have seen, but I was thinking oats instead of barley like BM's.

11 lbs. pale
.85 lb 60L
.75 choc.
.5 lbs oats is this enough?

Playing a bit has given me the percentages of the BYO recipe. I wanted a boost in the abv as well. How does it sound?

Oats are an awesome addition to a porter, imho. Make sure you toast them in an oven on 300F for 30-40 mins to get some extra nuttyness out of it.

Freezeblade said:

Oats are an awesome addition to a porter, imho. Make sure you toast them in an oven on 300F for 30-40 mins to get some extra nuttyness out of it.

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I was thinking toasting them, at least slightly.

Careful with that, I toasted 1/2lb at around 250 for 30 minutes (smelled awesome) and it gave the beer a very, almost overly pronounced toasted oat flavor. It mellowed after a couple months, but it wasn't great at first.